Friendly-types,
Hi there, how are you? I’m doing pretty good again, so i thought I’d say hi. But I guess the real reason I’m here is because of the DOTS!
Enjoy all the new art. Sorry about the over eager color saturation, but I’ll get better at leaving some white space for your weary eyes as I do more dotwork. I plan on becoming a regular DOTTARD in the coming weeks & months…
There was a lot I wanted to talk to you about, but I didn’t want to call each & every one of you on your smartphones, so I’m just going to leave my thoughts here & let you find them at your leisure & get back to me (or not) as you wish.
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| Time Gets Mad & Eats Its Children |
[Thank you for finally getting that I am not a nazi, just a writer who communicates in an exhausting & bizarre fashion…]
The topics I wanted to discuss w/ you are
1) Octopus Review news (thank you all for such an exciting 8th issue!)
2) Trans news (I declared my transition COMPLETE back in April, but it’s complicated…did I reach my personal peak of masculinity in April? yeah…Did I sustain it throughout the summer? not really. But I’ll talk about this another time… ) the other topic I wanted to say something about is
3) Vogon poems (aka automatic writing aka spirit writing aka stream of conscious gibberish that isn’t really poetry. I am used to not being noticed, ever, at all, much less in any artistic pursuit…and I couldn’t help but notice…that y’all noticed the Vogon poems & so I’ll say something about them, then I’ll give you Octo Review news….
How’s that?)
************* VOGON POEMS AKA ALL THOSE THINGS ABOVE *************
I guess you all know by now that I went on another “psychic safari” , except I’m calling this one “shamanistic fight club” and I really can’t say much about it yet.
The Vogon poems are a 542-page 14 pt document (and I apologize for that —even in beloved MS 10 pt that is a sizable doc). It begins 12-5-17 and ends 4-29-19 and should not be cherry-picked or read out of order. It also includes the Adventures “Rogue Bub” & “Red Flamingos” plus all the art that went with them.
I think I will change the name of it to “Installing the New Aeon” because that’s what it felt like. And I thank Douglas Adams for indulging my use of Vogon all these years.
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| 8 Alters & 2 Albums |
The writing portion of this spirit adventure has ended, but other aspects of it continue. Spirit writing is any stream of conscious writing done w/ the purpose of invoking contact w/ the spirit world.
I always loved to do this style of writing but knew it was not poetry, so when I committed to learning to write I sort of lost contact w/ my spirit pen pals : )) For seven years I really closed off that part of my thought process & wrote from a conscious brainy place. And it didn’t go well. I produced very little good writing that way.
I did hope that going from left brained to right brained writing would yield some interesting results but that was not the PURPOSE of the project. My intention when I started was for it to not be about incoming data that I couldn’t decipher until after it happened. Something different from the last time, I asked. And I guess I got my wish : ))
It all starts w/ being receptive to stuff that doesn’t make much sense…
…for me that was a few months of awkward left/right gibberish writing. But it was fun. Writing was fun again! Then by the summer of ’18 things heated up & I felt tapped into a meditative trance-like style.
By winter of ’19 I felt very trance-like. All the time. Like when you’re black out drunk & you have full conversations & continue to function pretty normally but you have no memory of it. At first this trance-like state was a nice welcome change from the nervous rodent I usually am, but then it sort of became a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from…
…and that’s when some really weird shit happened. Interesting. Scary. Can’t say much about it shit. I tried to say some things about it in the poems but wasn’t sure how “kosher” that would be, spiritually speaking. Someday I will try to write more consciously about the whole experience…but when I say a mother and son who died the same day came to me for help…
…pretty much sums it up…. if you can think of a mother & son who died the same day in recent history, you might get the gist of the spiritual dialogue that began as the writing exercises ended.
So, what about spirit writing predicting stuff? It’s been known to happen. The alpha state of mind is very elastic. Throughout this project, I read a lot about time & how it moves & pushes & bullies us on our peaceful orbits in space. But I can’t go into that now…our minds are more elastic than our bodies… that’s all my conscious brain will say.
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| TUMBLR meme? |
Anyway…the Vogon poems are not witchcraft. I have not cursed anyone ( I know you’ve designated me the bad witch, but I am a good witch, or possibly a magician since I identify more masculine now). I’m not trying to call out any person, race, gender, editor or ex lover. One thing I learned about writing, which I probably missed by not going to school is that HIGH SCHOOL and EXPLOSIVE ENDINGS are big fox paws. But why? I’ll never know.
And I’ll continue to write from whatever dot on my timeline I choose. KAPOW!!
************************OCTOPUS REVIEW NEWS*************************************
Before I started doing The Octopus Review, my true goal was to (self)publish a poetry chapbook. I saw allllll of you all doing it, and I thought it would be really neat if I could do it too. So I tried. I got software. I got advice from friends who’d successfully put together chapbook after chapbook. I felt like I could handle that part. But then I looked at my…oeuvre.
You can imagine just from reading this blog how exhausting my poetic oeuvre must be. I had 10 chapbooks, possibly 11 waiting in the hatch, unedited, totally slushy, messy, in need of repair. And when I say chapbooks I mean 70-page manuscripts really.
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| As promised, the Gentoo Emperors |
I quickly abandoned that venture and decided to do The Octopus Review instead. I had no idea if anyone would send me their poems when I first asked, but they did. And then this happened 7 more times!! I have to say I really like putting together a poetry/art zine.
However, before I do another Octopus Review, I feel like I must concentrate on getting a chapbook together. It’s going to be frustratingly left-brained but it has to be done.
Then — when that major feat is accomplished — there will be more Octopus Reviews. Getting a new website up will also be a major accomplishment for me, but I’m going to make the 2020’s about updating my technical lexicon. I’ve got 2011/2012 technology licked, but now I’m starting to feel left behind again : ))
I would like to keep the scrolling format but really pare it down to maybe 8 poems & 4 artworks & even offer a small payment to each contributor. It won’t be a lot, but I believe in artists & writers getting paid. We are also considering doing a writer’s retreat/ air bnb situation, but that may be beyond our hobbity scope, ie just a dream we like to dream, which would be a better reality for someone else.
Also… I don’t know how publications get added to Duotrope, but somehow I got added and it’s been interesting. All summer I received tons of fabulous vacation photos from all over the world. And I’m not complaining—there are worse things than a mailbox full of gorgeous photos.
But I don’t feel like I belong there. i am currently not using Duotrope, since I’m on submission hiatus. If I have any real friends who can check my Duotrope account & see if it’s legit that would be cool. If not, I’ll live : ))
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| I made this at Starbucks... |
I will start writing conscious poetry & submitting it again someday…maybe to you : O
